


in the face of violence

by redyucca



Category: Love Simon (2018)
Genre: Gay solidarity, Gen, Missing Scene, i've only see the movie and it was cute but also it annoyed me a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redyucca/pseuds/redyucca
Summary: Ethan and Simon talk some things out and they have more in common then they think.
Relationships: Bram Greenfeld/Simon Spier, Ethan & Simon Spier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 146





	in the face of violence

**"What might it mean to undergo violation, to insist upon not resolving grief and vulnerability too quickly into violence, and to practice,as an experiment in living otherwise, nonviolence in an emphatically nonreciprocal response? What would it mean in the face of violence to refuse to return it?"**

**\- Judith Butler**

* * *

_“Why’d you make that up?”_

_“I’m not a piece of meat, Simon. I trusted you.”_

_“You’re insanely stupid, Simon. I was never in love with Nick.”_

_“I can deal with you being gay, Si, but you set me up to get my heart broken with Nick and that just makes you cruel.”_

~

Ethan watched his keys disappear underneath his car and nearly screamed in frustration. The parking lot was mostly empty, so no one heard the swears tumbling from his mouth as he crouched down to assess the situation. He slammed his chemistry textbook on the ground when he realized there was no getting out of this mess without placing his entire torso on the ground and wriggling against the asphalt. His nice white button up was not going to survive un-ruined. 

As he was laying out his coat on the ground, still cursing every vexing thing in the world, from cargo shorts to white-people-taco-night, a tentative voice asked, “Need some help with that?”

Ethan looked up, relieved to see it was just a tired looking Simon, awkwardly gesturing to the drama unfolding before him. 

“Got long arms, Simon?” Ethan asked, leaning back on his heels, trying for Greta Garbo smooth and probably landing more around Jimmy Stewart disheveled. 

“Nah,” he said, flapping his average length limbs once pathetically. “I just, you know, figure you don’t want to stain your nice pants or anything.”

Ethan blinked.

“I mean,” Simon said, running a nervous hand through his hair and flapping his other again. “You’re just wearing white and like church pants and these jeans”—his fingers pinched at the material on his thigh—“well, they’re already pretty dirty, if I’m honest, and—”

Ethan cut him off. “Yes, thank you Simon, I would love it if you could crawl all over the ground and get your arms all greasy trying to grab my keys from under my car.”

Simon visibly flushed but he stopped rambling and dropped down to the asphalt beside Ethan. He carefully plucked up Ethan’s jacket and handed it to him before laying stomach down on the ground. After a minute of grunting and whispered shit’s and goddamn’s, he pulled himself up and offered Ethan’s keys to him, dangling them by the ring so Ethan wouldn’t have to touch his dirty hand. 

“Thank you,” Ethan said, trying not to feel so touched. It was only a saved shirt from target, really. “My hero.”

Simon snorted and put his hand on top of head, messing with his hair again. 

“Glad I could be of service,” he said. 

“What are you doing here so late, anyway?” Ethan asked.   
“Oh, um, rehearsal, you know,” Simon waved his hand vaguely. 

“I know that ended an hour ago, Simon,” Ethan said. 

Simon shrugged. “I’m just trying to stay out of the way.”

Ethan was doing his best to not pay too much attention to gossip of the past few weeks. He knew he would end up involved somehow (and, oh boy, was that a creative form of bullying, turning the cafeteria into a pseudo-night club), so he resigned himself to offering some words of support and watching from a distance as someone else received the same sort of treatment he’d been dealing with for years. He wasn’t expecting after their talk in the principal’s office to feel worse about Simon’s ordeal. He was bitter, sure, that he had been so alone in this for so long, but Simon seemed just as scared as he was. While Ethan had been alone, he wasn’t the only gay person who had to hear the word ‘fag’ thrown around. 

“Well I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Ethan said. “I’m a big fan of attention.”

Simon shot him a suprised look before turning his gaze back onto his own fidgeting hands. He swallowed so hard Ethan heard it. 

“Are you really?” he asked. 

Ethan stream of consciousness drew up short. No one ever asked that. None of Ethan’s friends ever assumed otherwise.

“I have to be,” Ethan said, quietly. “I never had a chance of passing.”

Simon nodded, his wisp of a smile apologetic and sad and understanding. Understanding.

Ethan suddenly couldn’t contain himself. 

“I mean, my friends were nice,” he continued. “I knew they would accept me. I’ve done a good job of never befriending any republicans. Of course, republicans are never on the look out for any brown friends, so didn’t have to try that hard. But it still, I still”—Ethan clenched his keys, leaning into the sharp pressure on his palm, glancing at Simon’s open and concerned and understanding face—“I just wish they would have been more surprised when I came out. That probably sounds crazy, or maybe ungrateful. But it hurt”—his voice cracked just a little—“that they were so accepting so quickly, like almost smug. Like they knew me better than me. It made me feel stupid, a little. Like I was still the joke. And I’ve been the joke all my life.”

Simon didn’t offer any immediate words of comfort, to Ethan’s embarrassed relief. They sat there for a bit in silence, listening to the distant track practice and traffic, before Simon said, voice solemn and thick with emotion, “Everyone wants to make it their business. But it’s not. It belongs to us. They just don’t get it. How scary it is.”

Ethan breathed through the wave of feeling rippling across his body. 

“I’m sorry you were outed the way you were, Simon,” he said. “I should have said that, before.”

Simon’s smile was genuine for a moment, briefly overcoming the weight under his eyes and the gray color hanging around his shoulders. It disappeared and he returned to looking guilty and tired. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you,” he said. “Could’ve taken some of the attention off of you if I had been a little braver. As brave as you.”

“You are brave,” Ethan said. “Staying in the closet doesn’t make you a coward.”

“It makes me a liar,” Simon said, tearing up unexpectedly. “It makes me a bad friend.”

“What?” Ethan spat out, truly bewildered. 

“I should’ve trusted my friends,” Simon said, wiping at his eyes. “If I had just told them, I wouldn’t be in this mess and they wouldn’t hate me.”

Ethan’s jaw dropped. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you telling me that your friends aren’t hanging out with you because you didn’t tell them you’re gay?”

Simon looked at him, alarmed. “No!” he said. “No, no, definitely not. They’re mad because I tried to keep Nick and Abby apart because Martin wanted to get with Abby and I tried to set up Leah and Nick because I thought she liked him and I treated Abby like a piece of meat and then I did all that instead of just telling them I’m gay.” 

He shuddered as he hunched back in on himself and Ethan fought down the urge to wrap him up in blankets and drown him in hot chocolate. 

“Martin?” Ethan asked. 

“Yeah,” Simon said, leaning back against the car and pulling his knees up to his chest, as if to shield himself. “He, well, he found my emails with Blue and said he would show everyone if I didn’t help him with Abby.”

“So he blackmailed you.” 

“Yup,” Simon said, closing his eyes. “But the whole school saw Abby turn him down and then made fun of him for it and there wasn’t anything I could do.”

Ethan shook his head, keeping a tight fist around his rage. 

“Let me make sure I have this all right,” he said. “Martin finds something that doesn’t belong to him, he uses it to blackmail you, a closeted gay kid in high school, to get with a girl who obviously does not like him, but he won’t take no for an answer, hence the blackmailing, and you go along with it because it’s your choice who you tell and when, but when he doesn’t get what he wants, he outs you anyway, still completely against your wishes, and then your supposed friends are all mad that you just didn’t out yourself to them in order to save them a few awkward romantic moments, the kind of romantic moments we aren’t really allowed to have without fearing for our lives in one way or another, and so they leave you high and dry, ripe for bullying, and now you’re the one walking around looking like you’ve personally killed all their mothers. Is that right?”

Simon’s mouth was open and his face was pale. He stuttered a few times, small attempts to protest Ethan’s characterization of the events, but Ethan watched patiently as each of Simon’s own arguments failed, and the shock of grief and betrayal began to filter onto his face. 

“That’s not,” Simon said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Sounds like the only person at fault here is Martin,” Ethan said. “And your dumbass friends maybe, for ditching you.”

“But—”

“Simon,” Ethan said, feeling fiercely protective not only of the very sad boy in front of him, but also of Ethan himself, and the sad boy who he felt was going to always live with him for the rest of his life. “Even if you know now that it would’ve been safe to tell your friends you’re gay, was that something you were one hundred percent certain of then? When someone was threatening to out you? It’s not your fault that Martin found the one thing that was sure to control you—not because you’re a coward or weak or you don’t trust your friends.”

Simon was actively crying now and Ethan felt like crying himself. 

“We,” and what a glory it was to say we, to not be alone in this strange and intimate and terrifying thing, “We can’t trust the world like they can. It’s not fair that we can’t. It’s just different. Good liberal friends or not—the fact that we have to ‘come out’ at all is just proof of how differently we’re treated. Coming out isn’t just announcing your sexual preferences—it’s changing everything about your life, in a way.”

Ethan let Simon finish crying as the sun slowly sets. A few orchestra students were laughing on the other side of the parking lot, but sitting in the cold shadow of Ethan’s car, they were relatively alone and safe. 

“Thank you,” Simon eventually said. “You sound, you sound a little like Blue.”

“I can see why you emailed that boy so much,” Ethan replied. “It’s…nice, to be able to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Simon says, smiling into his lap. “Yeah, it is.”

“Now we just got to find ourselves a lesbian and start a club,” Ethan joked. “Unfortunately, neither of us know anything about sports.”

Simon laughed and sat up, helping Ethan to his feet and picking up his abused textbooks. 

“I really like him,” Simon said, softly. “I miss him. I know the romantic stuff is scary, but I still wanted it, if it was with him.”

“Give him time,” Ethan said. “Maybe he wants it, too.”

Simon grabbed Ethan into a hug, careful to keep his dusty hands off Ethan’s shirt. 

“Let me know if you find a lesbian,” he said, stepping back. “We’ll start our own Pride, right down the hallway.”

Ethan felt lighter, sliding into his car and watching Simon walk away in his rearview mirror. For the first time he understood how big the world could be. 

~

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read the book. I just felt like the movie did Simon a little dirty and so I wrote this in a bitter half-hour fit. Might add to it later--just had to get this out.


End file.
